Major new corporate case at Court : SCOTUSblog: "A new appeal challenges the Second Circuit Court’s deeply divided ruling that foreign corporations cannot be sued in U.S. courts, under a 1789 law, for war crimes or human rights abuses.
Lawyers for 12 individuals seeking to hold major oil companies legally responsible for human rights abuses in Nigeria in the 1990s have asked the Supreme Court to overturn a federal appeals court’s ruling that corporations are immune to such claims in U.S. courts. The new petition, in the high visibility case of Kiobel, et al., v Royal Dutch Petroleum, et al., raises what may be the hottest international law issue now affecting business firms.
In essence, the case is a kind of ultimate test of what Congress meant when, as part of the first federal courts law in 1789, it gave U.S. courts the authority to hear claims by foreign nationals that they were harmed by violations of international law. The case also seeks to test what the Supreme Court understood the law to mean in its ruling seven years ago in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, an international abduction case."
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